Album dossier / 1986

Raising Hell

Run-D.M.C. · Hip-Hop

Run-D.M.C.'s third album became the first hip-hop record certified multi-platinum, powered by producer Rick Rubin's audacious idea to remake Aerosmith's 1975 deep cut 'Walk This Way' as a genre-crossing duet. The trio initially balked at the song, dismissing its lyrics as 'hillbilly gibberish,' but Rubin -- who thought the album was already finished -- pulled in Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and Joe Perry (then in career freefall after the flop of 'Done With Mirrors') for the session, even coaching Perry to redo a guitar solo he felt wasn't good enough. The single became MTV's first true hip-hop/rock crossover hit and revived Aerosmith's career; Rubin recalled Boston's WBCN getting angry callers demanding they 'take that crap off the air' the first time it aired, only for it to become the station's most-requested song within a week. Journalist Geoff Edgers later chronicled the collaboration's tangled making in his book 'Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song that Changed American Music Forever.'